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Tuesday, September 24, 2013

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For professional use, the fact you cant see how much recording time you have left or even format a card is a completely ludicrous omission and causes issues. Issues that take more time, more work, more stress, more stuff you shouldn't have to deal with in a camera. Blackmagic need to sort this out, it cant be difficult.

My computer is a 2011 MacBook Pro. It was the first to have Thunderbolt. 4 GB of ram. 2.0 quad core. It easily runs Avid Media composer, Motion, and just enough GPU to run Resolve. When I say “just enough” the software plays the 2.5K at the blazing speed of 1 fps. Not exactly the editing powerhouse, but it gets the job done... it just takes a bit longer.

In the first video, London based filmmaker and director James Tonkin shows the audience Blackmagic Design's DaVinci Resolve 10. He majors on the Blackmagic Pocket & Cinema Camera footage within Resolve.

As is usually the case, I had to turn over the User Manual (also in beta) to production much sooner than the software was actually finished in order to create the final layout. Because the DaVinci engineering team is so ambitious, this means a few new features were slipped in at the last minute that either aren’t in the manual, or are easy to miss. Here, then, is a short list of some great new features you should know about, lest they slip beneath your radar.

When I first became a cinematographer, there were two companies in the gel manufacturing business, Rosco and Lee. A few years later, a new kid on the block emerged, GAM Filters. They had been big on party colors, aka theatrical colors, and jumped into the color correction gel business as well. Back in the day, CTO was the only way to warm your lights up in increments. You had: 1/8, 1/4, 1/2 and Full CTO.

Color Me Mini| Coat of ArmsA short promotional piece about color grading a commercial. Note that they are using Magic Bullet Looks!

Lacocque also softened some edges and added a minor vignette to help focus the viewer. Ranged saturation, HSL, curves, pop, and contrast round out the overall look. And finally, whenever pushing a color look, Lacocque uses "auto shoulder" or another broadcast safe filter to ensure there aren't too many highlights that could cause issues when viewed.

In other words, should the shooter trim out all head / tails / extra roll material so the editor can just get the meat and get going quicker. Now for those of us who have been around it’s obvious we get EVERYTHING. But in this age where the tools are completely accessible to all, not everyone goes through traditional editorial training, thus very simple questions like this are not encountered.

To start our test, we set up the D16 on a tripod and lit a color chart with a daylight balanced Kino Mini. First we dialed in the 100 ISO settings using reference images of similar charts from other cameras so we could understand where other cameras like the Alexa place their black, white, and middle grey values. 100 ISO is by far the easiest because it uses the least amount of gain; in our case it used zero gain.

My favourite app for audio recording on iOS has just had a major overhaul. Rode Rec version 2.8 has an all new interface for iPad which puts all the essential controls on one screen – including the waveform display. You can also now export audio as an MP3 and even edit the audio right in the app (although I imagine most filmmakers will want to edit audio in their NLE or audio editing software instead).

The PL-mount variant of the Tokina 16-28 Cinema will be first to ship in the Japanese market, and is currently scheduled to arrive in late-September. The EF-mount variant is currently expected to follow from late November. Pricing for either version is set at around ¥580,000 (approx. US$5,900).

However, the approach does have drawbacks. Although the cameras are compatible with an iPhone, they're best suited for devices that support Near Field Communication. Pairing them with a Samsung Galaxy S4, for example, was a snap, but making them work with an iPhone—or any other devices that isn't NFC compatible—requires fiddling with Wi-Fi settings.